Monday, 5 September 2016

There are times when theorising and discussing
are not taking the issue forward and advocacy is needed. This is where the
protest march arranged by DeafSA on 1 September by all the DeafSA branches to
all the respective government offices to hand over a memorandum on SASL has its place.

Initially, when I heard about this protest
action on Facebook, mentally I supported it, and scrolled down, but I did not plan
on being there. In my mind, there are too many protests in South Africa, to the
extent that we have a ‘protest culture’ and seeing the coverage of the #FEES
MUST FALL campaign last year made me both wary and not interested in this rough
and tumble way of politics. Even though there was a genuine grievance, it was
the way that protests rapidly become chaotic and violence and missed their
original point, leaving everyone disgruntled. No, I had decided that this is
not for me.

However, being both organised by DeafSA,
and knowing the people there, this would not be a public disgrace of Deaf,
rather, a peaceful and legitimate protest. And I wanted to be there under such
conditions. And as a deaf person, this campaign is close to my heart: SASL
needs to be recognised as a 12 th official language. Under the present
government that has not happened, and probably still won’t happen. But I
believe that the government needs to see us, so when we are visible as a
diverse community in support of SASL then they will see. So my mind changed to
going on the march.

It seems, to me, inconceivable that South
Africa has the SASL CAPS but SASL is not an official language. Keeping SASL a
LOLT is a stop-gap measure to keep the rabble of hands quiet. So unless we as
SASL community raise our voices about the value and necessity of SASL for Deaf
people as a linguistic-cultural minority in South Africa, nothing more will
come of it. At the same time, by protesting for SASL we are, I believe, making
the cause for SASL CAPS curriculum stronger by making the language more
visible, not only in deaf circles, but among hearing communities. This is not
only the call to give recognition to a language for the Deaf, but there are
many more users and potential users of SASL than currently. SASL, like other
signed languages across the world, is a growing language, a trend. So we need
to seize this moment and ride the wave. It is worrying for decision-makers to
think that sign language may be a vastly bigger movement than they anticipated
since they are most likely still operating from a deficit thinking mindset:
SASL is for deaf only, with the attendant “Ag shame”, mentality. So as SASL
supporters, we have a responsibility to break through the ignorance of this
thinking and replace it with not only the human-rights discourse of protest
politics, but also go beyond that into the multilingual space in which deaf
bilingualism now has the opportunity of moving into and occupying. There are
many ways of being deaf, and SASL brings use together.

I joined the protesters at the parking lot
outside the Pretoria Art Museum, the designated starting point. When I arrived,
there were only a few cars and taxis and a handful of deaf people in black
t-shirts. The black t-shirts (with DeafSA logo and hands) were the give- away.
But this was a far smaller turnout than I expected. Right up to the time to
start, the protest gathered momentum but increased to a small crowd of about
200. I wondered if this was going to be worth it. But I was also mindful of the
quote:

“Never to doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed people/citizens [school leaders and
teachers] can change the world.” Margaret Mead.

And we began our march into history, behind
the police escort, of course. It was an almost silent march, only the people
at the front with the banner and the leaders were making protest noises. But
for Deaf protesters, there was much signing and jovial dancing to the beat of
protest. I felt a real amateur, it was definitely out of my comfort zone to be
marching. I do not see myself as a protester, or a Deaf rights advocate. On the
other hand, there was a sense of satisfaction from participating, making up the
numbers as ‘all deaf hands matter’, to paraphrase the American protest movement
of’ Black Lives Matter’. Inside, I felt quite rebellious, in taking on an
action of protest in a different form to usual.
At the same time, there was a sense of unease in the crowd that things
could turn ugly for some reason, which dictated the tight security of the
police and DeafSA protest officials to keep us on track and within bounds of a
civil protest. For this reason, the march could not proceed any closer to the
Union building than the top gate. This is where we could dance, and sign and
sign, and make a visible noise. The memorandum was handed over after short
political speeches in SASL. A word of ‘thank you’ to the interpreters for being
there as our language bridge. I was pleased to see that this all went smoothly
and nothing ugly happened. The crowd behaved with dignity and with cooperation.
This was not a march of an angry mob of barely controlled protesters. To me, this is the way it should be done, but
there is the other view that government only takes notice when people are
protesting so violently that something has to be done. That is not our intention.
At the same time, we are not protesting for the basic services, but we are
protesting for government to raise the quality of education of deaf learners
through SASL: our children, our, learners, our teachers, our children’s
children and the next generation of deaf learners need SASL to build a better
future. Deaf lives matter, too.

Coming back to Sign Language, it was
fascinating to watch the signing, meet old friends, acquaintances, and students, and make
new friends, and acquaintances. What really stood out for me was the diversity
of deaf people, a lot of people I have never seen or meet before. So this rally
of Sign Language strength showed me, and hopefully others, that Sign Language
does create solidarity. I felt proud of SASL, it is my language, it is our language. And Sign
Language is open to everyone.

Thursday, 23 July 2015

As an ‘oral success’, I want to reflect on what this means
and where it takes me and where it does not.

An ‘oral success’?
Because I speak, in my case, English, as well as a first language user, with
the right tonal and linguistic fluency, I can claim that it is my first
language. However, it has to be said that without hearing-aids I would not have
acquired this skillful use of language. So in that sense I am a successful oral
deaf person. In fact, although Afrikaans is the second language that I acquired
at school, without the same kind of intensive and extensive oral training as
English, I did not become nearly as proficient at this language as my first
language. So much so, that I am ‘frozen’ by the fear of speaking in Afrikaans,
especially to an Afrikaans speaker who can hear how badly I can mangle their
language. So I prefer to keep quiet. Afrikaans was a serious struggle for me at
school, and I just managed to scrape through. The orals in Afrikaans were my
weakest part of the language.

In contrast, learning sign
language as my third, and belated, language was a much more liberating
experience for me. Even though this is not my first language, and only being
exposed to good sign language users in my late 30s, and this was then followed
with the doing the hard yards of learning and using the language from then on. And
it will always be at a second language level to me, even though I want to reach
higher. Nevertheless, it is my language, I am proud of where I have got to, and
still learning it. It is far more useful and meaningful to me than Afrikaans.
When I switch off my hearing-aids, sign language makes so much more sense to
me. Although, for the purpose of following in meetings, it is still benefitual
for follow the interpreter with a more signed English version so that I do not
miss out on the nuances of the speaker’s points and terms in the meeting, as
there is a lot of academic discourse and terminology and ways of saying things
that can get lost when signed in SASL. I know that from what I pick up from
some of the speakers and how not all of this is conveyed via the interpreter to
me. Of course, this is not the interpreter’s fault, because the role of the interpreter
is to convey the message to the clients. If I am the only person for whom the
interpreter is interpreting, then I can dictate to the interpreter what I need
in the meeting and its mode, i.e. more signed English or less.

That is one scenario I wanted to
cover here. Another scenario is from the experience I had recently with the
loop system. Yesterday when I did not use the loop system in a small class that
know me, I found out a few unpleasant things about myself and being an ‘oral
deaf success’. Firstly, I really do benefit from the loop system, and because I
had not connected it, although it was there in the class, I found that I was
left behind in the to-ing and fro-ing of the classroom discussion. Instead of
immediately stopping everything and everyone with the comment about the fact
that I am not really following, and would they please hold on till I am
properly hooked up, I froze. It was not a conscious decision to freeze, but a
consequence of two things happening. Because I was so busy trying to process incomplete
signals and messages and multiple messages from the conversation that jumped
all around the room, I was on the back foot because of this listening flaw, and
its subsequent cognitive processing delay. This meant that I found myself
trying to think through what is being said and comprehend this information and
construct a thoughtful reply. By then the conversation had moved on. At some
points, I made comments that were a step behind. It was not a huge delay, but
it was a noticeable delay and had an impact on how I was running flat-out
behind everyone, while they were having a refreshing jog through the topic.
Phew, I was exhausted, in fact, I was too overwhelmed with trying so hard that
I was tired out, and therefore a silent passive partner to this conversation
when I could have been an active dialogue-er. Hence, I was silent. Being an
introvert in character, this is easy to miss. The longer this went on for, the
greater the sense of embarrassment of missing that golden opportunity that was
available at the beginning to establish the foundation of communication on my
terms, so that the oral deaf person was not left behind. That was my fault. With
hindsight and reflection on this in this blog, I realized that it would always
be best option for me to get this absolutely right from the start. For me, I
suppose that the feeling of being the solitaire/only deaf person came back to
haunt me among the group of hearing people. Even though they are all well-versed
in sign language and deaf culture and sensitive to deaf communication needs, I
failed to stand up and make myself clear that they were not clear enough for
me. It takes great courage to say what I
need to a group, ‘please …..’ whatever it is that I need, speak up, wait for me
to be connected, could you sit over there so I can see your lips, I am going to
move over there so that I can see…. This is the statements of an oral deaf
person needs to make tin order to fully be a part of the session. And that is
ok to ask, declare. I had to get over that, to let it go of the sense of being
embarrassed by making my unusual needs so explicit. It is always easier to
practice these in your mind but quite another thing to say these to people. I
suppose we hunger for connection, and are equally terrified of the possibility
of rejection, of being ignored, embarrassed, mocked, spurned. That is the
legacy of unspecified painful experiences from being embarrassed in a
mainstream education setting where being outspoken about ones difference, of my
hearing aids, hearing loss, and that I cannot hear was frowned upon, or
ridiculed.

Now, having said that: I am in the
place to ‘Let it go’. The cold touch of
this fear will never bother me anymore. I
am becoming an ‘Unfrozen’ oral deaf person.

The next thing I want to talk about is being deaf.

As far as I can recall, and from
my parents stories, I was born deaf. This seems to be the result of being a
preemie baby. I was born 6 weeks early. And either the over-saturation or under-saturation
of oxygen in the incubator contributed to my hearing loss. It was not profound,
but severe, in both ears. So I grew up with a hearing loss. I know that my
parents had to shout at me, so I must have picked up basics of English then,
unaided but left out of conversations more than a couple of words shouted at me.
At 7, I got my first hearing-aids, and had years of speech therapy, I will ask
my mom about these points. I really remember hating nursery school, it was so awful,
I was so alone I know I missed so much going on there, the songs, the words,
the pronunciation, the games, the rules, the basic information, friendships,
and conversations and life generally. Sigh. I have been passed recently the
school and it brought up a huge wellspring of sadness and soreness of being
lost in the world between sounds and silence in me. There, I have said that for
the first time. Getting hearing-aids at
the start of Grade 1 was a real opening of the world to me. I could hear so
much more and make sense of so much more.
And an enormous amount of catching up, with language and speaking and
general knowledge and social skills, I was so immature for my age, that that
was a sore point to me. I was shy child and I became more shy with the big
stand-out chunky-hearing-aids. At least I could hear. And I could hear enough
to be there, I do not regret that. I have an education that I am proud of. But
the socio-emotional development needed a lot more work than teachers there
anticipated or imagined. And the impact of this underdevelopment and residual
fear has persisted till today. It will take courage to always make my voice for
my needs heard among the hearing, as I look like I am one of them, and speak
like them, and that is a lie that is easy to swallow. But I am not, and no-one
can see that inside me. I am in both worlds, hearing and deaf, and at times, in
neither. This is the bilingual space that is sacred to me. This is the ‘inbetweenity’ that Brueggeman
talks about or a hybrid identity.

So to answer the following question:

‘I have chosen oral communication
for my hard of hearing child, and since embracing our journey, find myself
meeting deaf adults that use sign language. Sign language is very foreign to
me, so although I really want to, I feel embarrassed to go up to Deaf adults
and initiate a conversation. How can I make things less awkward?’

I want to say this is a good question to ask. Let me respond
by saying that the best thing you can do as a parent is learn to listen to your
deaf child. Learn to hear them. Be there for him/her. That is what I wanted.
From that premise, I wanted my parents to communicate with me. It was not a
case of they should have learned sign language. That would have been wonderful.
But it was not an option for them, so I cannot hold that against them now, and
I need to be mindful of that. They do not need my condemnation of their choices
at the time. Let it go. But also be flexible, things and circumstances change.
And people too. So give them, parents, and deaf children the freedom to use
whatever works and have the space to change when it suits them in their own
time. I have seen so much damage done to deaf learners who have grown up and
not had the freedom to explore the options. Give parents and their deaf child
the freedom also to change, to make mistakes, and find out what works and when
and why. No-one can tell you the answer because as I have found out, there is
no ‘one-size fits all’ for deaf children. Trust your instinct on what you see
happening, and keep all the channels of communication open and available. I am
proud of the diversity of languages that I have available.

From my experience of Greece, I
saw something that may shed light on this dilemma of joining a signing
conversation. I saw two similar hearing people respond in completely different
ways to the invitation to attend the Deaf Club in Athens.

One of my close friends went, and
simply mingled, and signed, and she fitted in by virtue of being upfront about
being a signer. And she was accepted within the Deaf community as a deaf
person. Meanwhile another person decided not to go because he thought this was
an evening for deaf people, even though he could sign. Thus, he chose not to
associate with them. I went to this club, and it was so good to be amongst
other deaf people signing and being deaf with them. Of course, there are always
some people who are easier to talk to or sign to than others, they will often
see you and find you and rescue you and surround you till you are stronger to
meet others. I remember these special friends with fondness who nurtured me in
my early days of meeting and socializing with Deaf adults. Just being there
(where there is a Deaf crowd) is the biggest and most obvious step to make. That
alone is making the loudest statement of your intent to be included. And by
signing an introduction to someone there says volumes of your willingness to be
counted as one of them and you have affirmed them by doing that. And you know
what is so beautiful, is to see my mom making that extra-ordinary effort to be
at a least a part of my world. That
blows my mind. I do not expect anything more: parents do not have to be native
signers, but keep looking for ways to bridge this gap. Then you know me, and
you have kept a place in your world for me. And I invite you into my world.

Back to the beginning point, am I an ‘oral
deaf success’? Yes, in that I speak well, and I have a strong foundation in
English literacy. But there is the caveat in that this means little if the
other side of me is not allowed to speak up. I am deaf, and there will always
be situations that are a struggle for me to follow. It is up to me to work
around these situations by being clear on what I need and not to miss the
opportunity to establish the kind of platform that is needed from the
beginning. This is part of who I am and what I need to do. I have tended to shy
away from doing that. And it is wrong of me and unfair on others. What kind of
role model of an ‘oral success’ am I modeling to others? That question stings.

I am proud of sign language, it
has its place in my life and I am also a limited user. But, from last week’s
experience of signing my responses on the Deaf panel, I am becoming more
confident in using the language that I have publically. And that in itself says
a lot about me. I count that as a success story of an oral deaf person.

Going by my audiograms, over the
years, there is a distinct downward slope. Like my mother’s mother, my hearing
is deteriorating. It is at the 98 dB/102 level 3 years ago. And while there are
some very high frequencies that I can hear unaided on one side, the vast
majority of sound is not heard. I suppose that a hearing test is needed again
soon. The biggest advantage that I have
over my grandmother is that I have sign language for communication, and am
blessed with excellent writing skills. So I am not a failure. Being deaf is
part of me, and it is my story. And I am not alone. Rather, I am not afraid of
being alone. Tell me your story after you have watched Frozen again. I am going
home now to watch Let it go (Frozen) on Bluray with subtitles) again. This song
says so much about what I am going through. And it encourages me to stand. By
writing this, I see a new dawn, I am free.

Song from Frozen Let it go

The snow glows white on the
mountain tonight,
not a footprint to be seen.A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.
Couldn't keep it in, Heaven knows I tried.
Don't let them in, don't let them see.
Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.
Well, now they know!

Let it go, let it go!
Can't hold it back any more.
Let it go, let it go!
Turn away and slam the door.
I don't care what they're going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway.

It's funny how some
distance,
makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do,
to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I'm free!

Let it go, let it go.
I am one with the wind and sky.
Let it go, let it go.
You'll never see me cry.
Here I'll stand, and here I'll stay.
Let the storm rage on.

My power flurries through the air
into the ground.
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blastI'm never going back; the past is in the past!

Let it go, let it go.
And I'll rise like the break of dawn.
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand, in the light of day.

Monday, 15 June 2015

Blog: In the loop 14 June
2015

Wearing the Domino Pro loop and FM system
has so far been wonderful. It is an amazing experience to plug in the loop into
the laptop and switch over to T-coil and have the sound streamed directly into
the hearing –aids bypassing the onboard microphones. It does have a few
drawbacks, sometimes the signal is not strong enough to pick up the sound when
wearing it on my neck as it is intended
to be worn, so I have found, and I know that I am not the only one who resorts
to this, is to wear on my hear. It really looks ridiculous that way, but the
signal is then strong. I just wonder if this has a health issue from wearing
the loop wire right over my head. So far I have not found anything on google
about that, yet.

It also plugs into my blackberry to pick up
calls and music, but this phone has a faulty headphone jack, a problem that it
has always had, maybe I will get it fixed. One thing that I have noticed is that
the bass does not come through nicely, when I got the plug to work on a rare
occasion. So, I am not particularly phased about not having this plug working.

Where the loop system really comes into its
own, and this reason for existence, is in meetings, classrooms and in church.
This is both a blessing and a curse. I will explain. In these places, it really
does a great job of picking up voices and sounds from the mike box situated
closer to the speakers. It is much stronger than my hearing-aid mikes in this
way, and the fact that this is placed much closer to the action, really helps,
and I have found that I am picking up much more speech than before. However,
there is the curse of too much sound, in other words, like at the last meeting,
I heard far more than I have ever heard in a meeting, it is a little
disorientating because it is feeding me sound from that location, but that is
not where I am, the middle of the table, in front of the main speaker,
chairperson. So when I speak, I have found that it helps to reconnect the
hearing-aid mike of one hearing-aid so that I can hear my own voice. Otherwise,
like I discovered, I cannot hear myself speaking when both t-coils are
selected. This is always a weird feeling, of not hearing myself, so I do not
know the level and intelligibility of my speech. It is preferable to turn one
hearing-aid to mike 1 program before I speak, but I do not always have an
opportunity to do that beforehand, and must select while I am speaking. I hope
that this is something that is endemic to the use of a FM system, but no-one
told me about that. Coming back to the
second issue, the volume of sound is quite overwhelming. I do not mean the
level of the sound only, but more in terms of its bit rate, if that term makes
more sense. For example, with hearing aids I am running on a 56 K bit rate
conversion, and this has been comfortable amount of sound being received and
processed digitally, the FM loop system feel, this is my perception of it, is
running at 128 K bit rate, and this double bandwidth of purer sound is frankly an huge jump in information. My brain
is struggling to cope with this double level of soundstage information. While I
am delighted to be able to access so much more sound from a stronger, central
point, there is a downside that I need to understand and find ways to work
through this for myself in the next meetings/classes and church sessions. While
I can hear so much more, I am not under the delusion that I can hear perfectly
now. I know that well enough, there are still things that are said that I do
not hear. There are still some gaps in
pickup of the words. Some people have easier to follow speech than others and
some people are a real problem for me to follow. But there are less cases where
this happens than before. This is important point to dwell on for a moment,
when I am struggling to hear someone then it is more difficult for me to think
along and think ahead in the meeting. Simply put, I need time to process what
has been said and what it means, and then respond to it. For me, there is a
wider gap between hearing and responding to the information. For most people in
a meeting, this flow of conversation happens intuitively and almost
simultaneously. To be honest, it does frustrate me that I am frequently not on
the cusp of the to-ing and fro-ing of a fast flowing conversation. This makes
me look dumb for not saying anything, or being just a bit too late with a
response to a point/comment that has now been finished by the group. Sigh, that
it what happens. Now that I have said that, what can be done to address this
problem? I think that when I have a comment to make, it would be both more
assertive and informative to say something on the lines that, “Do you mean
(summary)…, because with the loop, which I love, however, there is a delay in
receiving the sound and for me the process what was said, so I need a little
extra time to think about things before I can respond”. No-one else has used a
loop in these meetings, so it is up to me to clearly inform people there what I
am hearing and what I need from them in the meeting, which means having a
little more time to gather my thoughts so that I can also participate.

So, the benefits of this technology far
outweigh the difficulties. It is a powerful system, and I need to learn to
control it.

And this means being aware of my own deaf
spots. Just like the blindspots we have in car mirrors; there are zones/spaces,
places or situations in which I miss things. Instead of not seeing something, I
am in danger of missing what was said, this is not the same as mishearing,
which can also happen. I am afraid of missing things, or the importance of
something said. There are times when I pick up the urgency of the message, but
there are also times when I miss the clues that go with the way something was
said because I did not see the way the person said it, or pick up on the hidden
message between the speaker and the audience. Hearing and listening are two
different things, and while listening is dependent on good hearing, it happens
in the brain. But I am aware that I can still miss out on what is meant,
immediately, or very quickly. I need to be extra aware to where, when, who and
how I miss this in these deaf spots to remove these zones of silence and courageously
make sure that I fill in the gaps as soon I can.

Sunday, 23 November 2014

This is a letter that I should have written after I
finished school, but I realised that one is never really finished school. There
are lingering undercurrents of influence that continue to ripple over one’s
life long after matric. Some of these are positive waves of fresh water over a
desert of one’s soul and mind while and some are more like tsunamis that
devastate everything in its path by the coast from a far-off deep water seismic
event.

Teachers, you need to know:

Firstly, I am deaf.
Not ‘hearing-impaired’, not ‘deaf and dumb’, not ‘hearing loss’, not ‘hardly
hearing’, not ‘hard-of-hearing’. Deaf is fine, I am fine with this word, are
you? I really do not have a problem with this word in class, and you can use it
when talking to me, or talking about me in staffroom, or in the class. Time to
change the words. Deaf is cool now.

If you say the other words, then you can never really
get to know me. I am not hard-of hearing, or hearing impaired, as these imply
that I am somewhat in the hearing world, and ‘ag shame, we need to help me get
back in’, I really do not like that patronising tone and false sympathy and
pity. I need your empathy instead. Do you know what it is like to be deaf? No,
I am sure that you can imagine, but until you are deaf, you cannot understand
what it is like in class with all the noise and paradoxically, all the silence
and muffled sounds and missed words, sentences, dialogues, instructions,
whispers, gossip, hidden meanings, announcements and general everyday cacophony
of sounds and noises that are almost impossible to distinguish. Coming back to the water metaphor: either I
had a trickle of information, or drips, or suddenly, a tidal wave of
overwhelming amount of water (sound) with its accompanying confusing detritus
of information, it was confusing as I struggled to wade through the information
of sounds for useful lifebelts of knowledge, like when the test and what we
must actually do. You see, hearing-aids amplify everything, which is the
problem, as I cannot often work out what is being said clearly, when others are
talking at the same time or the general noise of the classroom impedes on my
attention as everything is important to me. I do not have the same tuning-out ability
that hearing children naturally have, so I am all at sea, cast-adrift, in the
noise. And it is exhausting trying to keep up and decipher the messages. That
is why I used a few close friends to help me understand what is required, they
were my anchors of stability and understanding, sorry to say, teachers were not
the best way of understanding. When the class was quiet, I could listen to you
provided that you did not mumble, drop your words, not finish words at the end
of sentences, or look away from me, at the board, or at someone else, or at the
overhead, book etc. that is when I was pulled away from understanding by the
rip-tide current of confusion and misunderstanding. Look at me, make sure that
I see you, make sure that I follow, make sure that it is calm in class so I can
follow you, make sure that I follow the points raised in class, make sure that
you aware of my needs. I was neither
deaf nor hearing enough, and this caused much identity confusion, although I to
take on the default hearing identity and try my best to pass, with both
meanings of the word. There was much unresolved emotional baggage about my
identity to be addressed. It is ironic that I found much support in the advice
and counsel of a blind guidance teacher. It was our shared experience of being
disabled that really helped me.

For example, and this links up with the next point, it
is easy to get totally overwhelmed by the noise that I need to zone out for a
few moments to recover. Let the wave recede and I will be ready for the next
one. I did not feel that I was surfing, just swimming, was all I could manage.
Although in some classes, I did better than others. Such as Std 2 (Grade 4)
second time (I had to repeat this year, I was not emotionally ready or learning
to read and follow with the class, that was the right thing to do), and Biology
in Grade 9 (Std 7), Geography, sometimes, and English, Grade 11. Maths,
Afrikaans, and science, and History were horrible, a real struggle to keep
afloat. And in all of these subjects, it was about the amount of information I
understood, communication was key. So I took refuge in the safe harbour of the
library, and in reading to try to be ahead of the class or at least catch up.
This meant that I came to love reading, even though it was a struggle to
understand, once I understood something then I could ask questions, or if I did
not then I could ask questions about this too. I hated this feeling of being
left out and left behind. I was always feeling alone in the mainstream, jus
surviving was an achievement, and I tried really hard. I wanted to pass, I hate
the feeling of failing, it meant that I was not good enough to be there. In the
recess of my mind, I always feared failing and going backwards to a school for
the deaf because I could not cut it in this school. And that time, that school for
the deaf was strongly oral, although the learners signed among themselves.
Although I never met another deaf person during my school years, I always felt
inferior in this school, a ‘disabled’ person, like some I saw with back
problems, or weak eyes. To say that this
school was inclusive at the time would be inaccurate. To be fair, this is how
things were done then. I had to adapt, it was always about me fitting in, and
not being good enough. Many times I came home in tears, and I recall the
feeling of loneliness and not coping and not being included, or fully
accepted. How could I tell you, you did
not ask, or did not want to ask, I must be strong, and many teachers told me
that I am doing so well with my handicap. I wanted to scream! And rage against
this sympathy. Listen to me. You are not listening to me because you do not
understand.

Now that I am older, and writing this letter, I am
more skillful and aware of the bigger picture and see things better. And do not
blame you for this unintentional oppression of me and deaf people, you did not
know better. I see how ignorance of deaf learners is a problem, and the lack of
knowledge that teachers had at the time of deafness and in the classroom, and
that teachers did what they felt was the best they could do under the circumstances
without actually upsetting the status quo of deaf people, the wave of the social
model of disability had not yet broken over us here. But that wave of change was
coming, I remember the play at the Market Theatre: ‘Children of a Lesser God,
This was a moment of epiphany in my life. Inside, it washed over me, I was
filled with the idea that deaf people do struggle and need to say something,
being oppressed as a deaf person is wrong. Society needs to treat us fairly.
And that sign language is a language too. Up till then I had no exposure to
sign language, although I would have loved to have learned it earlier, but it
was not an option. The focus of my education was to achieve a matric exemption
so that I could go to university. And I achieved this, maths and Afrikaans were
the two subjects that terrified me. I cannot lipread Afrikaans, plus all my
speech training work focused on English and this paid off, but Afrikaans was a
serious obstacle. And maths was a problem as I was so dependent on the teacher
explaining how things work, but I battled to follow in class for the above
reasons. In any case, I passed by the
skin of my teeth in these subjects to get the much needed matric. I wanted to
study further, but I studied hard and only managed these results, nothing to be
delighted about, compared to the other boys there who were expected to excel
either in academics, or on the sports field. I did neither, I was nothing
special, and at a top private school, that is a damning review of the reality.
But, I was me and I wanted to be me, not the person that the school wanted me
to be, a dux scholar, an A-team player, or a prefect. None of these were ever
attainable for me at that time. I was a
small fish in a big pond, to quote Malcolm Gladwell. His point in David and Goliath
is that often it is better to be a big fish in a small pond ha nth other way
around, if I were at St Vincent, I would have been in a position to excel
there, rather than struggling to swim in this huge ocean, against the tide, I
was always chosen last, nobody wanted to have me in their group, sigh. Although,
it has to be said, that I may not have achieved the much desired matric and
university entrance by going that route. There I would have been much happier,
but less educated because the standards were lower, not a tough for my parents,
and I do not fault them for that. Just that so much more could have been done
at the school to accommodate me, more dignity and better communication would
really gone a long way. For example,
there was a teacher who later had to have small hearing-aids, and he had not
accepted himself and was teased by the classes, and felt so ashamed for him, as
this was the same kind of bullying I experienced, and he did nothing to make me
feel better as he was wrapped up in his own pain. I could not get through, and
he intentionally distanced himself from me probably for fear of more rejection
from learners by being associated with me. So I did not have a positive role
model, his attitude made me hide my deafness more, to come out of the closet,
metaphorically here was not possible as there was no support. So I kept my
undeveloped deaf identity below deck. Have you read Gina Olivia’s book ‘Alone
in the Mainstream’? Her experiences mirrored mine. I am giving you some
homework!

With hindsight, I would love to be back there and said
all of this to all of the teachers and demanded more from teachers to service
me and nurture me the right way. Only a handful of teachers did that for me. So much more could have been achieved, but
the school did not have in place the kind of approach or structures or support
or awareness of deaf learners, like me. The school had to change, and I can see
that with the inclusion movement, the school has become far more accommodating
and respectful of the diversity of learners and their needs. Well, that ship
has sailed, so there is no use complaining to the school about what the school
did wrong. That is over. The real issue is about the transformation of the
school and creating opportunities and awareness of diversity of learners. And in
improving teacher’s awareness of deaf learners to avoid making the same
mistakes again. Yes, there is an undercurrent of anger here, and especially of
frustration of being left out and not understood in class. You need to hear
that, as much as I need to say it to you. I do not want to hear your excuses
for what you did and did not do, that is over. The point is, by talking about
this bitterness openly, there can be an awareness of the bitter memories from
my side and the bitter knowledge of teachers to allow us to begin to find our
common humanity and begin to heal.

Let me end this point with a quote:

“If a child cannot learn the way we teach, maybe we should
teach the way he/they learn” Ignacio Estrada

Second, I am an introvert. I need time alone to think
and recover from the noise and bustle of classroom life. Not all deaf people
are the same, and this part of me was misread and ignored, I was cast as a
loner, a social outcast. Only later did I appreciate my strengths as an
introvert, from Susan Cain’s book, Quiet.
I am at peace in my world of silence, except I could not find and enjoy this at
school. What I mean is that I had to be ‘hearing’ 24/7, by keeping my
hearing-aids on. This was the cost of a hearing identity, of course I could not
see my own hearing-aids, but I could see the way that teachers and pupils
responded to me, usually it was different to their peers or others, or
indifference or hardly or badly disguised disdain or superiority, because I did
not hear what he or they said. So it was a painful time of social isolation and
neglect. I always consoled myself that they do not know any better, and that
the rewards of a better education here will pay off later. I love deep one-to
one conversations, in a quiet place. Crowds are my problem, even more so
because even with hearing –aids I cannot follow the overtalking and look at the
different speakers’ faces, and watch the other person’s reactions and process a
reply. I am easily over-stimulated in noisy classrooms, it is exhausting for me
to decipher what is going on which means that I need a time-out of silence to
recover. And I have learned to escape from these times into place of quiet and
solitude. I really love my inner world of silence, I think quietly these, and
read and reflect and write in this space. For me, it is not a zone of doldrums,
but a place in the ocean of life that is sacred to me and I need to retreat to
this place often. Teachers need to know that and teach within and around this and
not focus so much on the extroverts in class. Listen to the silent ones on
class, like me. Ask me what I think in a way and place that is conducive to me
giving a well-thought-through answer so we can dialogue on this.

I found a harbour of safety in books. Once my reading
improved, because comprehension was a problem for me, then whatever books,
magazines, journals, I could get my hands was pirates gold of information to
me. In books, I could understand without relying on incomplete sounds and
mumbled/muffled dialogues. Remember, this was the time before subtitles, and
DVDs, and internet and smartboards; we had overheads, VHS, with awful sound
quality, microfiche slides and tape recorders. I found that reading gave me a portal into a
new world of knowledge. I am still a book-lover, this is a lifelong hobby and
habit that started at school as a survival mechanism which really help me cope
and explore new worlds.

Third, I am dyslexic, when I read, I frequently mix up
B,D,P. and 5, E, S as well as keeping numbers in the correct order. That simply
makes it harder for me. It is not a big problem, compared to my hearing loss,
this is minor, but it does have an impact on my reading speed and proficiency.
It was a struggle to read. Now I read really well, but have to watch out for
these literacy whirlpools.

Fourth, I am a lefty. This is another thing that makes
me different. For teachers, this is not a big deal, just that I need space so
elbows are not bumped with a righty. Lefties think a little differently, and
live life as a minority in a right-handed world. So discrimination is part of
their life. But most lefties are well adapted to doing things with both
hands. But there are things that
irritate and frustrate us: books and folders and pens and scissors are made for
right-handed people. I always wore my
watch on my right arm, not left, so I was a closet lefty! Much later, after my
school years, I had the courage to change and wear it on my right, which is
natural for lefties, as well as making the statement that I am different in
this way. Just so you know. This mist of
invisibility was pervasive, so much so that in the middle years of school I had
small hearing aids that fitted in the ear to make it less visible. Even though
these were less powerful, I wore these. I did not know that until I tried new
over the ear hearing-aids and realised how much sound I was missing. I remember
this conversation with my parents that I wanted to hear more even if it
everyone at school saw me with big hearing-aids on. I won that and it was the
right way to go. I was learning to stand up for myself. And people at school
did not any worse than before, or better for that matter, but this part of me
was now visible to them.

Fifth, I am a teacher. On the surface, it seems that
this is an ironic choice after all the struggles and complaints that I have
raised here. When you look deeper, being
a teacher is both a lifestyle choice and a career move. As you can see, I have
much that I want teachers to know and do with learners, especially diverse
learners. I strongly believe that the inclusion of learners happens because of
what teachers know and do, their attitude towards deaf and hard-of-hearing
learners makes a huge difference. I was always told to be the same as everyone,
to fit in, go with the flow, when this was not helpful advice. I am me, and
teachers need to know learners are diverse and have unique needs. Get to know
each person well, this connection is essential and the effort is worth it. Teaching is about communicating, and I know
how important this is as I have struggled with this. I love it when someone
understands what I am saying, and lately, what I am signing. And this is where
the earlier quote is so meaningful to me, we as teachers need to adapt our
teaching to match the learners. We need to engage in the dialogue of
understanding them. And this dialogue of learning is at the core of my
teaching. I have first-hand experience of the frustration, confusion and loneliness
of not understanding what is being said, in class, as well as when I do
understand, which is why I have had to focus intensely on being clear. I am an
‘in-my-head’ kind of person, and being ‘out-of-my-head’ and fully explicit is a
skill of communication and way of thinking that I have had to develop, as a
teacher, and as an academic. Thus, teaching is a vital part of being an
academic, along with the focus on becoming an established researcher. It amazes
me now that the tide has dumped me back on the same beach that I started my
sea-faring journey; teaching. I am nourished by teaching and on reflection I
have discovered that if I am nourished, then the students or learners are also
beneficiaries of what my experiences and what I have learned.

I entered the
teaching profession as a hearing person and left 11 years later as an
identity-confused person. Who I was supposed to be was not working for me, and
I realised that I had reached the end of my hearing identity chain, this anchor
did not hold cargo on this identity ship. And I had to have a honest look at
myself. By pretending to be a teacher, albeit one with a hearing problem or as
a hard-of-hearing teacher, was a false identity that did not float anymore. It
was a traumatic period of my life of sinking, drowning and ultimately releasing
that identity which was not mine anymore.
It was time to board a different ship, and this was called ‘SASL
Bilingual’. But there was much identity work to be undone. The flotsam of the
old identity had to be disposed of, and for a long while, I hang onto the
lifejacket of my hearing-aids, and citizenship with the hearing world. But this
identity was lost at sea and I really struggled to let go of the wreckage.
There was a very real sense of being dragged down to the depths and drowning.
Until I was confronted by others and circumstances that this old identity was
pulling me down. It was so hard to let it go. This is what I knew. I did not
know enough about the deaf identity, despite being born deaf, and without
hearing-aids, I am deaf. So I preferred to stay with the life I knew, even if I
did not fit in there. I was rejected, and eventually I faced up the reality
that this is not where I belong. In my
heart, there was a small place that reminded me that I am not alone, this is
the lie that I was told over and over again, I was alone in the school the only
deaf/hearing-impaired, brave one, etc. This is also the lie of apartheid: that our identity cannot change. If you are
white, you cannot be black, and vice versa. And so to was this lie extended
into my life: I cannot change my identity, I was hearing impaired /deaf (small
d)/ hard-of-hearing etc. I cannot change my identity to become a deaf person. I was never seen as a deaf person when I was
at school, I was anything but that, and I believed it. And so much has been
invested in making me ‘hearing’ that those ropes of selfhood cannot be untied.
If I had met another person like myself at school, then this fallacy could have
been disrupted and challenged. But it was not the case. So I was constrained by
this system of auditory apartheid. I was forced, with much encouragement on how
well I was doing (for a hard-of-hearing/person with such a severe hearing
loss’) to become someone that I was not. It was easy to believe that lie
because it sounded (sic) so sweet. But it was a lie, and did not see it that
way. Hence, I lived a bracketed identity, and these heavy brass brackets were
drowning me. I do not blame teachers, but later when I understood the
mechanisms of this system of exclusion and oppression, I had the tools to untie
these ropes that had for so long anchored me to the hearing world. I cut these
ropes and was cast free, and for 5 years, I was a castaway. During this time, I
learned that I love silence and found my deaf self. I was free from the tyranny
of my hearing-aids, I was free to learn sign language, which became an option
when I moved, literally and symbolically into the deaf world and made new deaf
friends and acquaintances. I learned to be deaf. And to use an interpreter,
which was never an option in school. To marry a hard-of-hearing wife, who
introduced me to this world. It is ironic that she wanted to be in the hearing
world more, as she had lived in the deaf world more, from going to a school
for the deaf, which she despised for its educational neglect and low standards.
But she could sign. And I switched ships from the hearing world to the Deaf
world by learning sign language and became far more involved in this world.
Becoming a deaf lecturer in Deaf Education at Wits was the catalyst to this
identity shift. But I also had to find my own way in the waters, I am
bilingual, and have become better at signing. I have not lost my home language
for the sake of being deaf. I am more of a multi-purpose international vessel,
I use both languages. Now I am a signer, a second language signer, but I am
proud that I use SASL and an interpreter more proficiently. It has taken 10
years to reach this destination. I am a proud
deaf bilingual person. That is my new identity. I like the new me.

I am becoming a writer and my proofreading small
business has made me proud of this successful business enterprise. This is not
something that I would ever have envisaged doing when I was at school. The real
joy of this is that I am an independent business person where I run this
business solely through emails. Contact with my clients is done through emails
of their documents. Being deaf does not matter here. What matters is the
service that I provide and having a really good command of English as a high school
English teacher, and as a (academic) writer myself has borne much fruit in this
home industry that I have established. This
achievement has banished the fallacy and expectation of private schools of
super-achievement. As learners, at xxx, we could hardly fail, we were the
elite. But I did not feel that way, I was trying to stay afloat, I was no more
than a mediocre student there. I am proud of where I am now. I am not a
chairman of a board of a multinational company, but I have found myself and giving
back to the next generation of teachers and learners. Teaching, is the greatest
profession, even if it is not seen this way in South Africa, we change lives.
No technology can replace a teacher. Who you are as a teacher determines the
learning and development in your learners; be that person who leads them into
their future as confident and independent thinkers.

For me, writing, academic (for PhD, poetry, my own
blog site) is an essential outlet for me, a way of putting my thoughts down and
reflectively engaging with words and experiences and ideas.

Lastly, I am almost 50, so this is a good moment to
reflect on the 30-plus years of life after school, on what is important and
what could have been different, what I could have changed. I think that I learned
a lot at this school, but I could have been more confident within myself, less
tentative, which was borne out of not knowing and following conversations,
being lost and trying to fit in. For me, this fearfulness of not knowing has
receded with the increasing knowledge and skills and involvement with other
deaf people, I found that I am strong, and that I am not alone. I am not angry
anymore with some of the teachers that I had for putting me down, I have
learned to forgive you for what you did not know or understand about me. And that statement has released me. My
request and prayer is that teachers take the time to learn about deaf learners
and understand us. You can ask me anything so we can talk about it.

Finished this book. In Afrikaans ook! This is the first full
Afrikaans book that I have read since matric. I never thought that I would ever
willingly read an Afrikaans book again. I am really proud of the fact that this
has been done. It took me from 29
November 2013 to 12 January 2014, to read the 277 pages. This is really slow
going for a book, but the triumph comes from having read it in Afrikaans. I struggled
at the beginning, and could only manage 2-4 pages at a sitting, once I got into
it, and the story started to flow, then this increased to 6 then 10 pages, and
steadily the reading improved from jerky Afrikaans, to a more flowing narrative
once the word order made more sense. To be honest, I needed to go back and
re-read sections, or sentences to work out the meaning many times, but it was
satisfying to do this and gain a grasp of the story in another taal.

Reflecting back on the experience, I found that initially I
was reading and translating in my head back into English, but at some point,
this is a fuzzy area where the Afrikaans and English overlapped and gradually
became less English, as I just let the reading happen in Afrikaans. Trying to
translate the words and sentences into English proved to be a helpful strategy when
I got stuck, but it was also a hindrance as I lost the flow in Afrikaans. But
gradually I began to trust myself to understand the text in Afrikaans and not
rely on englishing it. This is where I began to understand what translanguaging
means: it is about moving/switching from one language to another language. It is not about, as I previously thought,
about moving between languages, as this implies that there is always something
in your hand. Translanguaging means letting go of one language, and the one
that you are comfortable and skilled in, and grasping the other language on its
own terms. The linguistic knowledge of English is of little help for making
sense of Afrikaans beyond the vocabulary. Once the meaning of Afrikaans words
is grasped, by using the home language as a language base, then the second
language can take hold in the mind of the user. As long as the user bears in
mind, as I have experienced with Afrikaans ways of saying something, that these
cannot be adequately expressed in another language without something valuable
being lost. This is the translator’s conundrum/dilemma, how to make it clear
without losing the core vitality of the language as it is used to convey a
thought, or description. And letting go of English, in my case here, was a leap
in the unknown, or the unseen world. This is always a terrifying moment to let
go of what you know and go into a world where you are the outsider, or where
this is not your first language. There is the fear also of being unable to penetrate
the words and language of the other, and not being able to connect with the
text. Sufficient knowledge of the other
language is needed to make this jump. By way of a metaphor, I cannot half jump
across two tall buildings. The jump has to be across the chasm of doubt over to
the other side.

Each time I read started reading a few more pages in
Afrikaans, this jump had to be made, but it got easier to make each time. It
became less unfamiliar. I began to expect that this is necessary and the
gateway into the world of the book, but also into the language of the story as
it was being told. The image of a
frightening jump was replaced gradually with the image of a portal into a
different but increasing familiar world.
Thus, this is useful for understanding the process of translanguaging
that teachers encounter and their fears and discoveries. I want to find out
more about the teachers translanguaging from Afrikaans to SASL.

Sometimes I had to stop and go back if a paragraph did not
make sense, and that was ok. Or I needed to look up the work, and there were
many words that I have never encountered before, or had seen but did not know
the meaning. Sometimes I read on ahead to see it made sense, but at a slower
pace to absorb it, and this worked well at times but other times I still did
not get it and had to resort to looking up the word and that helped break
through this log-jam.

There are a few myths about bilingualism that this exercise showed
me: that I saw the beauty of Afrikaans on its own terms, when I read it in and
through Afrikaans, and even though Afrikaans is my second language here, I
still found the power and expressiveness of Afrikaans that transcended the
English translation, in fact, I found that reading the story in its original
text, Afrikaans, as constructed by the writer/author instead of relying on the
English translation meant that I lived
more richly in the world of these characters, plus it allowed the reader, like
me to bring to bear the knowledge of Cape Town into this narrative. This is a
uniquely South African crime thriller, and in Afrikaans, which means that it is
not pandering to the English genre and knowledges of this genre, crime is a
part of the human condition, and more real when it is made real in the context
of the place it happens, then the reader feels connected with this storyline as
opposed to a sci-fi separation from reality.
The myths about Afrikaans as a progenitor and agency of oppression in
south African language and political landscape sells it short as a language of
a people with its own ways of seeing the world, which are not necessarily still
pre-1994, or apartheid-centric. Indeed, this story showed me, as I have seen on
the streets of Cape Town, and at the school, that Afrikaans is a living
language and that it has changed. It is
moving away from its knowledge of guilt and memory to a new place of being a
part of the South African landscape. The same applies to SASL: it needs to
engage in this debate for its space in the public’s consciousness and awareness
as a living language that is indispensable. It is not just about the number of
users of the language, that does matter, but it about how it is used, and the discourse
that it embodies, is it a discourse of bitterness, and victim-hood, and of the
oppressed, which is the opposite discourse to Afrikaans, I venture that SASL is
now in the place, to accept the hurt and heal from the past, and
move away from the oral oppression to a place of strength. What kind of
knowledge is being captured and valued? Where is SASL aiming to become and why?
How will deaf people carry SASL into the future? I see that there is evidence
here that deaf bilinguals are similar to hearing bilinguals, speaking English
and Afrikaans, and Afrikaans and SASL are not mutually incompatible, but there
are many variations or shades of being bilingual, and that is good. Culturally, I see learning and reading in
Afrikaans made me more aware of the Afrikaner mindset and I felt myself
becoming an ‘Afrikaner’, partially because I allowed this to happen, and
because the culture and language are inseparable, including the history and the
present and the future, the same applies to SASL, for me and English, and when
I was at the school, with SASL and Afrikaans, which is a reason behind why I
wanted to immerse myself in the Afrikaans language and life to heighten my
sensitivity to the language from the inside, by being a second-language
insider. Making this effort to become connected with the language is vital to
getting into the mindset of the characters of the story, but also into
‘hearing’ their story, as some of the teachers are Afrikaans speaking. What about SASL, and where does it fit in and what is the future of deaf learners
as signers, and as bilinguals, and what is the teacher’s role as language model
and what knowledges are passed and valued, and what will be left behind, and
what will happen to teachers and learners in 5- 10 year’s time?

The acquisition and use of different languages is important
in the shaping of the learner’s lives, and also of the teachers, who are on a
parallel but different journey. And as a deaf teacher-researcher, I have my
fingers in many pies, am familiar with both sides, but look forward to
understanding how this works for both sides, with the focus on the teachers who
have the interests of deaf learners at heart, although they may not all have
the same vision and aims based on their perceptions and experiences and
attitudes to sign bilingualism, as it is happening and where this journey is
taking them.

The next book in the series that I want to read, in
Afrikaans, to consolidate this bilingual journey and growth is 'Feniks' (half way through now):

Sunday, 30 March 2014

On Friday, I traded in my old Honda Ballade, a faithful and
reliable car of 15 years and with 275 000 kms on the clock. The time had
come to change it, both financially, and practically as well as
emotionally. For me, each of these pieces
are vital for change to happen.

I had to be ready.
And I was.

The old one was traded-in and the new car, also a Honda
Ballade, my experiences of this brand had not scared me away from a newer
model, in fact, I was being loyal, just a newer one, so the change was somewhat
less stressful. At least I knew something about what I had bought and could
expect: hopefully another 10-15 years of reliable motoring. Sometimes this kind
of change is not possible and the change we make is bigger than expected or
desired, and consequently the level of stress experienced is higher than we
want to go through. But we ‘man-up’ to the task of getting on with the job and
hope that this period of anxiety will subside soon.

Right now I am pleased with the new car. But it also taught
me a few things about change. Firstly, everything feels new, and I am still
used to how comfortable the old (insert appropriate change in here:
person/job/church/home/…) felt, in fact I like the way the old car rode, and it
did not demand much from me, I knew exactly how to drive it. I knew its
familiar noises, creaks, odd moods and habits. Fifteen years had engrained its
personality and ways on me. And I miss her. It is funny how the English
language gives things a personality, and we give a female pronoun to an object,
like a car, we have a strange language and culture! But the old car has had a
lasting impact ( no pun intended) on me.

On the other hand, the new (car….) was different. Definitely
better in many ways, ABS, airbags, electric windows… all these new goodies too.
But it felt different to drive. In fact the first weekend was fraught with
anxiety of the “I hope I do not hit anything/I hope nobody hits me in my new
car”. This phase has to be survived. It is a necessary part of the change
process, just like the glory of ‘the new car smell’. Which incidentally only
lasts short while until the kids have made it their home on wheels. I love
them, and I know that they are more precious than the conglomeration of metal,
plastic, glass and rubber. The first week of the daily grind/school runs/
drop-offs and shopping will take care of that soon enough. Despite the rules
laid down to preserve the interior in is showroom pristine state, this is an
unobtainable quest of parents for cleanliness other than stuff them in a venter
trailer behind. You are right, no reasonable parent will do that, because know
that it is just a car. Still, it is hard
to let go. And there are rules to live by/drive by. They need to know that it
is new, and precious to me. One day they may saviour the same elation of a new
(first) car ownership for themselves. But ultimately, I have found that the
state of the car will subside to the state that I choose to keep it. In time,
it may become like the old one. Or the driver may have the pride, discipline
and strategies in place to prevent this from happening. We all want to keep the new car like we had
it on the first day, but this demands a lot of attention to maintenance of the
appearance of the vehicle, inside and out, I feel sorry for those with a black
car for its extra attention for looking good. In this way, the change to the
new brings with it the need to apply the necessary standards of maintenance of
the new. For some, the old is the benchmark. For those without children, the
shock of babies and all the mess that accompanies them will be a severe shock
to them. Once a car has been puked in, it is no longer the same pristine
car. But then it has a new status as a
‘real’ family car inhabited by a real, proud family, despite its scars. And the
owners are no longer ashamed, as their values have shifted. We cannot turn the
clock back. The only way is forward. This is probably the greatest challenge to
accepting change, it is the readjustment we need to make to our values and
standards.

I am hoping that this new car will bring me many miles of
safe, reliable motoring and new memories. My values have changed: previously, I
wanted a car that was fast, and exciting and fun to drive. Now I value safety
and reliability above these younger values of my hedonistic youth. Coming back
to the mental photo collection I have of my memories. There are many memories
of places, and things that happened over the 15 years, and the quick look
through the service history file gave me food for thought on where this car and
myself, and the family have been over these years. For some people, that is not
important, but for me, this proved to be a powerful tool for moving on, by looking
back one last time. Before I let it go on Friday, I found it both emotional and
healing to take a moment to relive some of these until I felt that I was ready
to hand over the keys of the old car. It was just a car, but it was so much a
part of my life that is essential that I respect the memories; the bitter and
the sweet. Letting it go is the hardest part of change. Of course, I could have
changed my mind and cancelled the deal and got back into the well-used,
well-known car and driven off. But why? And where? Sometimes that happens, and
we have to deal with it. We were not ready or the deal was not a satisfactory
replacement. For some this is easy to do, while for others, letting go is
really hard. If we do not deal with our
feelings, then we may feel empty, as a way of simply cutting ourselves off from
this event, or feel that we have dis-honoured our experiences and memories.

And it takes time and begins a whole new cycle of adjusting
to the new, on its own terms. The new car has Bluetooth, and VSC, EBD, ABS, and
other new developments. After 15 years, it came as quite a shock for me to see
how far things have moved on. The new car really shows up how backward and
antiquated the old one is now. And I found that was delighted by most of the
new changes. Sometimes, things do not change for the better, but the mantra of
technology is that ‘new is better’. And I decided to go along with that.
Besides, my old model Honda has been dis-continued. The car factory does not
make this model anymore, even if I asked/pleaded. I am the one who has to move
on, to keep up with the changes, and cope with the jumps in technology that
occur from time to time.

Right now, when I see
the new car, I am caught off-guard mentally: I was expecting to see the old
white car there. And it is not there. I am still in that phase of seeing the
old car but it is gone. The new has come, and it is a silver car. It takes a
moment for my mind to get around the idea that this is the replacement. If it
was not there at all, then the shock would be devastating. Do you remember that
feeling when you came back to your car but it is not there. Only to find out
that it has not been stolen but that you parked it somewhere else instead. That
has happened to me. This was a shock to me. In the same way as when going
through a change that you do not choose, but are fearful of happening one day,
an empty parking bay means that my car has been stolen. What do I do now, what
am I going to do/Why me? And many questions of despair and confusion paralyse
us. We need to be the change-partner to people when they are going through
these traumatic changes. Our support, not judgement, is needed.

Coming back to the point about seeing my new car in the
place where the old one was parked. Either I can learn to accept that the old
is gone and that the new is here, or this becomes a ‘groundhog‘ day for me as I
remain stuck/fixated on the old, to the extent that I disregard the new. When I
welcome the change, then the process of adapting to seeing the new becomes
easier each day until it has become second nature and it is no longer new
anymore. This is all part of fun of making a new collection of memories from
the new experiences of: ‘my first time under…/over…/with…/without…’ This means
that another change is inevitable, as we humans thrive on the new-ness of
things that change brings. It is not the change that matters so much as how we
are changed by the changes.

This is what I have learned about change: (and this is
subject to change!)

So many
things change, it happens.

Some changes are good, some bad,
keep going. Do not freeze.

That
change is a part of life.

I need
time to deal with each change, some more than others, then I am changed.

When I look back, it is exciting
to see the change that change has brought, even when the initial change (event)
was not good.

Real change happens on the
outside but it is experienced and dealt with on the inside.

Everyone deals with change on
their own and in their own way.

Letting go happens when you are
ready.

Sometimes you do not have the
luxury of time, be courageous in the face of the change.

Remember that you are not alone
in the change you are going through.

You will be different.

Try it. And learn from it.

Change makes you stronger.

Do not be afraid, (anxious is
ok).

Tell someone about what you went
through, listen to them, and be with them.

Wednesday, 29 January 2014

This topic is a reflection on what happened and tends to
happen when listening to a person using a microphone, in this case it was a
really senior speaker. On top of that, I was prompted to write about this
because at this staff meeting, our sign language interpreter was not available
which meant that I had a limited range of options: either I boycott the meeting
citing the lack of access. I decided that this route would be political suicide
as most of the staff, except the speaker, know that I can hear a bit, and can
manage fairly well with many people in face-to-face conversations, although
there are some people who are not possible for me to follow even with
lipreading.

Even when sitting in the front row, or second row, there are
problems for an oral deaf person. I am an ‘oral deaf’ person because I am deaf
but with the aid of hearing-aids I can hear fairly well, but not naturally. I
will come back to the kind of sound that hearing-aids reproduce later. The oral
part of this identity refers to the use of spoken language, as I have said, I
can hear a fair amount and I speak well. But for oral deaf people in the audience,
there are still difficulties in following in meetings especially when a
microphone is used by the speaker. This may seems paradoxical, surely a
microphone would be fantastic for me. Let me go through what a microphone can
do and cannot do for me as an oral deaf person.

Although it would be a reasonable assumption to make that
this is the best seat in the house for a deaf person with hearing-aids, or a
deaf person with deaf-aids (an interpreter) there are still challenges. For
example, I found that in this meeting, that the microphone was just the right
place. Being able to see the speaker’s lips is to me more important that
hearing the person through the sound system because they are standing close to
the microphone. It is a misconception that I can hear better through a sound
system, and I have plenty of experience in meetings, at church, at functions,
award events, weddings, funerals of microphones. In actual fact, the proximity
to the speaker is more important to me than the microphone, and its often
excessive distorted volume since I can hear their words better when this is supplemented
by their clear type (like Microsoft ‘clear type’ font, but the default ‘clear
sound’) speech and seeing their lips. In
other words, this real-time streaming of words via sound and sight without the
intervention of technology is usually, and ironically the best way for me to
follow.

However, the moment that the speaker shifts their body a
little and the microphone obscures his/her face, and predominately in front of
their mouth, I suffer from a breakup in the signal and the communication
weakens. I can only compensate for this by a small amount by shifting my
posture in the chair to see their mouth again. This has to be done subtly, as
the people behind will have their view
interrupted, which is at best mildly annoying and impolite to squirm in
front of others, or I may be inhibiting the view of another person who is reliant
on seeing the speakers lips, another deaf person, or has a mild hearing loss.
In which case, they will be really irritated with my movement that caused them
to lose their hold on the speaker’s words. Sometimes, this can look funny when
the members of the audience move along together with the speaker’s movements.
At least this shows whose attention the speaker has, and who is left behind.
But this can be an embarrassing for those who are left out. While on this
point, the speaker who talks and talks, pacing up and down and moving around
away from the podium/lectern is committing the cardinal sin of poor etiquette
for the oral deaf in the audience. It is not possible to see the person’s mouth
when they are moving around, and turning away, and the constant focussing on
the person moving is really distracting, even though this is fine for hearing
people to follow because the words follow the microphone, but I am usually lost
with the person who moves excessively. Remember that the light that falls on
the speaker is best at the microphone set up at the lectern, and when the
speaker moves around, then the light is not optimum, and frequently I cannot
see the speaker’s mouth because the light is now behind the speaker, and blots
out the critical details of the face and therefore the lip movements. Lip
reading is effective only to no more than 15 metres. Beyond that distance, the
signal degrades so a speaker should not wander beyond this visual range. My message here is: ‘Please stay still so I
can see you speak’. And also watch out for the overuse of hand movements and
gestures that can be very distracting when I am watching. As well as keeping
your hand/s away from your mouth when speaking, otherwise I will miss out on
the words and just hear a mumbled sound.

Now, looking at the impact of the microphone on the sound
quality, it would be fair to say that this is a mixed blessing. Depending on
the type of microphone, a big microphone on a stand, or a lapel microphone the
positioning of the microphone does affect the quality of the sound, generally
the big old-fashioned mikes are better but these tend to be used incorrectly:
many speakers speak too close to the microphone and speak much too fast. This
causes two problems for me. Firstly, apart from not being able to see their
mouth, there is the problem that the sound is distorted by being to close.
Secondly the common mistake is to speak in exactly the same volume, pitch and
pace as normal for talking to a room of people. For me, the speaker’s clarity
will be greatly enhanced when the microphone is not right next to their mouth,
to eliminate the distortions, and to avoid the speaker either shouting into the
microphone or whispering. This is caused by the speaker’s over-reliance on the
technology to carry their voice to everyone, in other words, the speaker just
has to speak and the technology will do the rest. But if the speaker is more
aware of how they sound, and the impact of their voice through the microphone
them this can be fine-tuned out. I have seen novice speakers change their voice
when using a microphone, and for the worse. This is the consequence of nerves. Their fear of public speaking is heightened when a microphone is used. Everyone is
looking at you. So, the voice often tightens up and is a rushed stream of
higher than normal speech, the sooner this is over the better the speaker
feels. Instead, the change of voice that
is more effective when using a microphone, for hearing-aid users in particular
because everything gets amplified, including the bad with the good, is to slow
down, enunciate each word fully, especially at the end of sentences. Mumbling
words at the end of a sentence/point is so frustrating. Imagine how the
hearing-aided person feels to be following until the last word is garbled out.
It is not my place to keep asking the speaker to repeat. And when it is just
the last part/word that is important or possibly unimportant?, how frustrating
this practice becomes. For example, good news readers never mumble their words,
and every word counts. Just remember to slow down to enough to say everything.
And drop the pitch down an octave to allow the pacing to be slower but more
measured and controlled. I have found typically a lower pitch carries better
through a microphone than a higher pitch. And lapel microphones tend to pick up
the deeper pitch better than the hand microphones, and I am sure that not
holding a microphone also contributes to the speaker speaking in a more normal
pitch of voice as it is a less intimidating. I am saying that having a
‘microphone-voice’ voice is a valuable skill for academics, to have and this
comes with the awareness of one’s own microphone-ed voice and with practice
until this is regular practice.

There are some other issues that apply to the members of the
audience with hearing loss, and with hearing-aids for the speaker to be aware
of. Since I have to focus on the speaker’s mouth for extended periods with a
really focussed eye-gaze, which in itself can be intimidating to the speaker:
why is this person/people staring at me so much, that is rude! No, I am really
trying to follow everything you are saying. If the speaker knows who needs to
lip-read deliberately, as opposed to the causal watching of most hearing people
in the audience then this concern will dissipate. At the same time, this causes
two problems for the ultra-attentive viewer, it is both exhausting to focus so
intensely for long periods, and often
this is accompanied with repair work to the sentences that were not heard
properly, mis-heard, or information was simply absent. So there is an ongoing
simultaneous process in the viewer’s mind of repair the speaker’s speech so
that it makes sense. On top of that, the viewer, like me, is expected to think
about the words and put forward intelligent questions or comments. That is the
expectation that is typical of academic and formal discourse in a meeting in
various forms. The difficulty for me is that there is simply not enough time to
process all the information, and correct it where there are errors, and still
come up with a response that shows my comprehension of the speaker’s point/s in
an articulate and intelligent way. Therefore, the slower pace of the speaker,
when using a microphone is a powerful strategy for accommodating audience
members like me. It gives me time to
catch up, collect my thoughts and to respond with an appropriate comment, even
if I do not say this out aloud. Before I
leave this point, it needs to be added that this focused listening and
watching is both physically and mentally tiring. A pause every now and again to
look away and recover is useful way of extending the meeting without losing my
grasp of the session. For example, as I get more tired with maintaining
eye-contact to keep up, the more easily I am distracted by anything that is
happening around us in the venue. This distraction has two main forms, the auditory
distractions, such as someone’s cell phone ringing, or a bus driving passed.
Remember that hearing aid technology amplifies everything, and everything has
equal value, so I am always trying to work out if this new sound is important
or not. The brain has a natural ability to tune out background noises quickly
and effectively. This is a processing capability that I lack, hence, every
sound is potentially a major distraction to me. And as I become more tired from
focused attention, the less successful I am at ignoring these distractions.
And when I avert attention to the noise, I lose out on the speaker because I
looked away, and need to look again and catch up. Sometimes, and speakers need
to know this, the noise drowns out the speaker, a loud plane overhead, and the
speaker can usually carry on because most people with normal hearing can still
follow in and through the noise. I cannot. So pausing for a moment till the
noise is gone will be more effective than losing me and then repeating, if I
ask the speaker to repeat because I missed out. Bear in mind that these extra
noises are more than a minor distraction and irritation to me. This is often a
wave of noise that hearing listeners are adept at riding, but this is alarming
for me as this is a wave that I cannot surf. Instead, this wave crashes all
over me and throws me around. It really is disorientating experience. And hearing-aids are not the surfboard for
riding these waves.

The second kind of noise is the visual noise. During the last
meeting, I was distracted by the long banners that were flapping in the wind on
the left above of the speaker’s head. Again, as I get more and more tired, the
visual distractions become more tempting and impede on my visual field of
vision for attention. Once I know what is moving and how and why, then I can
try to tune this stimulus out, provided that it does not keep interfering with
alarming movements. Either a movement is annoying because it is sudden, or a
repeated movement that bugs you, just like a clicking pen, or a tapping foot. When
the speaker is aware of the visually distracting elements in the meeting, and
restores the calm by closing windows or removing the flapping, waving,
movements, then I am in my happy space of attentively listening and looking at
them.

Bringing this back to microphones, it is worth knowing that
hearing aids and microphones are electronic devices and generate/process sound electronically.
This means that is sounds different to natural sound, and has its place. We
tend to expect too much of microphones, and forget that for some people, like
me, this sound is going to be reprocessed as electronic sound and leads to
the double loss of fidelity that I
experience. I discovered this phenomenon in the new lecture theatre with the
sound system there. When I sat out of lip-reading range (approximately less
than 10 m away from the speaker) I could not follow the speaker, even though
the volume was not a problem. It was loud enough for everyone, but with at
least 4 speakers (the devices, not the people) play the voice of the professor
at the same time, this became a garbled blur of sound as the sound from each
speaker overlaps and interferes with each other. Thus, I caught only a few
words. Can you imagine how dangerous it is to process on the basis of a few words,
even though you were there and heard everything. But in reality, only a few
isolated words were clear to me. For people without hearing aids, this use of
technology is a non-event. But for hearing-aid users, this layer of one
technology (microphones) on top of another layer of technology (hearing-aids)
creates a sound barrier. Therefore,
being in visual range of the speaker is imperative.

But, there is still a problem. When meeting has many
speakers, such as questions or comments from the floor, it can be really
difficult to follow. I know that there are people that are particularly aware
of my needs, and they speak clearly, and I can see them, remember to give time
for people to see you and make eye contact, I need this so I can follow. There
is nothing worse than a weak voice from the back behind a pillar. If it is
standard practice to come closer and use a microphone, or stand close to me, I
will be at the front anyway, then I am really relieved to have been included in
this discussions without making a scene. Of course, some people prefer not to
use a microphone, but want to say something off-the-cuff. And I may still miss this information,
it would really help me when the speaker summarises the speakers comment, for
all of us, and for me. This is extra work for the speaker to do, but it ensures
that the speaker has also heard the comment accurately and has understand the
point. Or to make a note so I can read about the points made in the session.
Not all meetings are minuted, and I understand that writing something down
makes it more formal, so people tend not to say anything that could/would be
written down. Perhaps if this is explained that all comments are written down
on a non-prejudice basis, so that these cannot be used again them, this would
help with the content of the meeting. Then I know if and what I missed, and can
ask specific questions based on this information.

It is hoped that this information about the limitations and
good practices with microphones will be useful to building awareness of the
needs of hearing-aided members in the audience. Sometimes I have a Sign Language Interpreter there, and this ameliorates
many of the difficulties associated with microphones, especially if the sound
quality is too poor for me to pick up, or that I cannot lip-read. But I cannot
lipread and watch the interpreter at the same time as it is physically and
linguistically impossible. When an interpreter is there, then I focus on the
signing more than the speaker, and gain a lot of information. It needs to be
said that this is still tiring. The next blog will look at how and why I use a
sign language interpreter. And some ‘do’s and don’ts’ for academic staff members to bear
in mind when using a sign language interpreter.

About Me

I am a bilingual DeaF Guy. I have twin girls, and my own small business doing academic proofreading.

My research interests are deaf identity, anthropology, ethnography, narratives, case studies, and bilingualism. I am currently doing a PhD on a case study of a school for the Deaf in implimenting bilingualism.

I love flying and aviation, BMW and Formula 1, and reading, I am an introvert, and love silence too.